Day 15 {Whole30}

As I’ve mentioned before, our oldest has food allergies. She is allergic to dairy, eggs, peanuts, and tree nuts. Pretty much she’s allergic to joy. Kidding, kidding. Kinda. I realized today that doing this Whole30 has made me walk in her shoes a little bit. Even though we have walked the food allergy journey by her side and have been the ones advocating for her, we still had no idea what it meant to not be able to eat whatever we wanted.

Today we attended a really lovely baptism with some really lovely friends. Afterward, we went to the reception and for the first time at an event, I was limited in what I was able to eat. Now, if I eat a piece of lasagna, I’m not going to need an EpiPen and an ambulance ride, but it was a little glimpse into the life of a food allergic kiddo.

While for her, not being able to eat cake and goodies can sometimes make her desperately sad, for me I wasn’t so much sad I couldn’t eat, I was worried about having to talk about why I wasn’t eating or why I passed on the cake. I didn’t want to explain the Whole30 and every time I walked through the kitchen I got anxious that someone was going to push a plate of something into my hand.

Hospitality is a huge thing to me. Remember, I come from a long line of intimidating Mexican mothers that will literally shove food into your mouth if they think you need it. It is important for me to be hospitable to my guests but also to accept the hospitality of others. So not eating food that someone is offering me is almost painful. I feel like I might as well slap them. Food = love and if you reject food then you reject love.

But you know what? Everything went fine. Nobody noticed that we didn’t eat plates and plates of food. Nobody noticed that we didn’t have cake. And we were Whole30 compliant. Us for the win!

Rainbow Slaw – I’ve never been a big fan of coleslaw but this was surprisingly delicious.

How We Felt:

Halfway done. We’ve started discussing what our eating is going to look like post-Whole30. It is an interesting conversation. I would hate to come out of this and go straight back to eating the way we did before Whole30.